By Nancy Patrick

People who know me know that I have fought a battle with despair and depression my entire life. Addicts confess they will always be addicts even if they have maintained sobriety for twenty years. My type of depression resembles that description. I may have periods when my depression lightens, but the shadow it casts in my spirit remains present.

I have noticed that more and more people in today’s technological society suffer from depression and despair. With the constant bombardment of news, fake news, artificial intelligence, political upheaval, wars around the world, and social media, many find themselves in a world where they feel oppressed.

In recent years, several celebrities have announced their need for time away from the spotlight in order to attend to their mental health. Whereas people with depression used to hide that information, today many agencies and health programs focus on mental health. Drew Carey, the host of The Price Is Right, ends each episode by saying, “Take care of your mental health.” He has long shared his own issues with depression and advocates for those dealing with the disease.

Though I have focused on the subject of mental health in previous articles, this article focuses not so much on depression and despair as it speaks to a possible response to those feelings.

My reference to social media as a source of negativity in many lives refers to sites such as Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and others where people feel free to write pretty much whatever they want. The anonymity those platforms afford emboldens people to say mean, hurtful, and often untrue things about others. Some use the platform for revenge or to cause harm to people they dislike.

Obviously, we can refrain from using those platforms; however, avoiding their content is almost impossible. This past Sunday morning, Dr. Matt Cook, the interim pastor at First Baptist Church, preached a sermon from Isaish 40: 28-31. Matt served in this same capacity a couple of years ago and has returned as our church goes through a very difficult time.

Difficult times create an atmosphere in which anger, hurt feelings, blame, bitterness, lack of understanding, and aggressiveness can grow from a tiny pang to a raging quake within our spirits. The Isaiah passage urges us to remember what we should already know.

“Do you not know? Have you not heard?”—those are rhetorical questions. Of course, we know and we have heard that our God is the creator, the everlasting and omnipotent Lord of the universe. Amidst our grief, sorrow, despair, hurt feelings, weariness, weakness, and depression, He will not bow to these foes that attack us. Where our minds feel numb and our heads ache and our eyes shed tears, He does not grow weary, nor does he falter.

Isaiah tells us that though others around us stumble, their stumbling may result from their loss of hope. How can we have hope when our worlds seem to crumble? How do we have hope when those we love betray us? How can we maintain hope when others attack our character?

Matt referred to a time when someone he loved betrayed him by using social media to spread false rumors designed to harm his reputation. Because of social media’s viral nature, fighting it may be a losing battle. Rebutting false accusations may prove impossible because those words are already out there. Sometimes we simply must wait and find hope in that waiting.

Dr. Suess’ book Oh, the Places You’ll Go looks like a children’s book but really teaches people of all ages about what to expect in life’s journey. 

Dr. Suess, in his always clever style, takes the reader through the ups and downs we all experience in life and then writes, “You can get so confused that you’ll start in to race down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space, headed, I fear, toward a most useless place: The Waiting Place…” (my emphasis)

These waiting places persist as the hardest places in our lives. We feel useless and defeated. We drum our fingers and question God and blame others for stalling our progress. The opposite may be true. God often encounters us while we wait—we know not for what. When we wait, God can talk to us. He can talk to others. The onus falls on us—to listen and heed his direction. 

In one of my darkest periods when I felt torn by shattered dreams and goals, I found a ray of light during one of my American literature classes at Abilene High School. I stood and began reading Emily Dickinson’s poem that begins with these words: “Hope is a thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tunes without the words and never stops at all.”

As I read aloud, tears began streaming down my cheeks, causing my sweet students great concern. I couldn’t very well hide from them the great emotional burden I had, so I shared enough for them to understand how words so powerfully arouse emotions. 

Those emotions can do so much good in our world, or they can cause evil. We need to carefully measure and weigh all our words before they come out of our mouths or appear in print on social media. We have the power to destroy hope or inspire it.

Nancy Patrick is a retired teacher who lives in Abilene and enjoys writing